Galtieri, Leopoldo Fortunato

(1926–2003)

   General, army commander, and the president of the third junta (December 1981 to June 1982) during the “dirty war” in Argentina. He graduated in 1949 from the United States’ School of the Americas in Panama. On 2 April 1982, to distract public attention from the country’s economic and social unrest, he ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, which were governed by Britain. On 17 June 1982, after Argentina’s defeat at the hands of the British in the brief Falklands War, Galtieri resigned from the presidency in disgrace, replaced by Reynaldo Benito Bignone. In the 1985 trial of the nine former junta commanders, Galtieri was acquitted of humanrights crimes—the third junta had taken office after the worst of the repression was over. In May 1986, however, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the nation’s highest military tribunal, convicted him of negligence during the Falklands War. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and stripped of his rank but was released in October 1989 following a blanket pardon decreed by President Carlos Saúl Menem.